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Joy Behar is returning to stand-up comedy

By John J. Moser

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

Posted:
02/04/2014 10:08:14 AM PST

Updated:
02/06/2014 11:53:26 AM PST

Six months after leaving her job as one of the founding hosts of ABC-TV's daytime talk show "The View," Joy Behar says one of her biggest surprises is that she doesn't need to have every moment of her life scheduled.

In fact, when she answers a reporter's phone call at her Manhattan home, Behar says she's doing a crossword puzzle and watching television. "It's a funny thing," she says. "I thought, 'Oh gee, I have to have a lot of things planned.' But I don't, really. I'm busy, but I'm not overwhelmed, and I feel less stressed. ... So I'm enjoying the time.

"I like to write, and I like to perform, and I'm working on different types of things. So (leaving daytime TV) gave me an opportunity to expand a little creatively."

Back to stand-up

For Behar, 71 -- a fiery redhead with a brassy personality to match -- that expansion includes a return to stand-up comedy, which lured her away from a teaching career in the early 1980s and at which she made her living for 15 years before "The View."

Behar says she never intended to leave television completely. When she started the "Joy Behar Show" on CNN's HLN network in 2009, then "Joy Behar: Say Anything!" on the Current TV network in 2012, she expected she would continue those shows after leaving "The View." But both were canceled.

'Numbered' days

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"I loved my other shows a lot," she says. "I really loved my show on Current, because the title told it all -- 'Say Anything,' and we did. And my HLN show was great, until they started to change the format a little (and) forced me to interview the (accused child-killer) Casey Anthony people, and it was really getting annoying then.

"But other than that, I kind of liked that show, too," she continues. "I had wonderful people on. Bill Murray came on -- he never goes on any show like that. I interviewed Catherine Deneuve. ... It was like a dream come true to me -- I've been a huge fan of hers forever. You know, fantastic people came on my shows."

She says she knew "my days were numbered" with Current TV when its owners, including former Vice President Al Gore, sold the network to Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news channel. "I was very disappointed that Al Gore sold it ... because I liked my job a lot," she says.

Behar also speaks well of her time on "The View," which got her 14 Emmy award nominations for outstanding talk show host. She won in 2009. Highlights for her, she says, were mostly moments dealing with politics. She mentions the October 2010 show during which she and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set after guest Bill O'Reilly, the conservative talk show host, said that "Muslims killed us on 9/11." "When I walked off (that) show ... it was one of my favorite moments," she says.

Asked about her least favorite moments, she demurs. "I really can't pinpoint a disappointing time," she says. "Sometimes the interviews just don't go anywhere and the topics are just not as interesting. ... But I always say those conversations are like similar ones you have in your own life. Some of them are great and some of them are not."

Behar downplays her contentious relationship with fellow "The View" panelist Star Jones, which reportedly led to them avoiding sitting near each other and culminated in a 2005 argument over Jones' Christian faith. Jones left the show abruptly months later.

Behar, a liberal, and former panelist Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a conservative, engaged in many heated political discussions. "And that's what they seem to want," Behar says. "But maybe people get tired of that. ... Right now we're not in a heavy political period, so maybe it's time for fluff."

Behar says she expects "The View" to change even more when Barbara Walters, 84, retires as its co-host in May. "Oh, it's got to, of course," Behar says. "I mean she's basically the ... center of it, the glue, the person who started it. She thought of the whole thing, and her presence has been felt. But I think that, yeah, it's going to change a lot."

Behar says she can't talk about all the projects she has in the works.

"There are deals being done by my manager," she says. "I'm trying to work on a one-person show, stuff like that."

Behar has had bit parts in a dozen movies. Most recently she played a psychiatrist in the Farrelly brothers' 2011 comedy "Hall Pass" and she voiced a character in the 2012 animated feature "Ice Age: Continental Drift."

She also has written two books. "Joy Shtick -- Or What Is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come with Attachments?" was published in 1999, and a children's book, "Sheetzucacapoopoo: My Kind of Dog," came out in 2006.

But she says she is not eager to undertake another. "It's exhausting to write a book," she says. "I wrote ("Joy Shtick"), the whole thing, myself. And when you do that, you really have to work at it.

"I'm trying to work on my material right now, you know? I'm trying to be good on (the comedy) stage, and that's what I'm concentrating on. ... A lot of my stuff is autobiographical -- how I grew up in Brooklyn as an Italian girl -- even though people think I'm Jewish. ... It's just basically a hopefully fun, party-type of feeling that I create, and I hope that people come to have a good laugh and have fun."